The present invention relates to the provision of alert messages to customers of an establishment.
When visiting a business establishment, such as a restaurant, customers often find that, due to a high volume of earlier-arriving customers, they must wait for the business establishment to be ready to offer them services (e.g., to have a table ready at which they can be seated). Rather than having the customers physically standing in a queue during their wait time, it is common for customers to leave their name at a reception desk. Traditionally, a receptionist would call out the customer's name when the services were ready to be offered. More recently, it is common for the receptionist to hand the customer a short range pager. When the establishment is ready to offer services to the customer, the receptionist identifies which pager was handed to the customer and causes an alert signal to be sent to the short range pager. The short range pager responds to the alert signal by activating one or more user interfaces (e.g., visual, audio, and/or tactile) that are interpreted by the customer as an indication that the services are ready to be provided. The user is then supposed to return the pager to the receptionist who then arranges for the services to be provided to the customer (e.g., someone shows the customer to a table) and also arranges for the pager to be made ready for a next customer.
The inventors of the subject matter described herein have recognized that existing customer notification techniques have a number of drawbacks. For example, short range pagers have limited range. This makes it possible for a waiting customer to wander far enough away from the establishment that the customer's pager does will not respond to an alert signal when it is activated. The customer under such circumstances will fail to receive the notification. In the best of such circumstances, delivery of the customer's services are delayed only by the amount of time it takes for the customer to come back within radio range of the establishment and receive the notification. In worse circumstances, the establishment waits only so long before moving on to give the services to a next waiting customer, so that even when the original customer does return to the receptionist, s/he must now wait further for the establishment to again be ready to offer the services.
Other examples of drawbacks of existing notification techniques come from the fact that short range pagers have poor battery life, and are very often stolen.
The inventors of the subject matter described herein have therefore recognized that it is desirable to have other means for providing alert messages to customers of an establishment.